Mack

Birds of Prey

A hawk perched on a stop sign at the head of the cul-de-sac flanked by the orange cones of a construction zone. I was a stranger in a borrowed Cadillac, obviously a visitor and the residents made note of it. Posts and fences and high tension wires gave the birds of prey an altered landscape and the suburbs yet another constructed reality. The neighbors spent the weekend tending lawn tossing glances at the new visitors making note of how I walked the dog leash-less and stood center street to watch the rhythm of machines graze the conquered land. I recalled the chores I did as a child. Weekends didn’t begin until the room was cleaned, the house dusted and vacuumed and, in the fall, the wood split and chopped. There were three of us to tend the latter, the boys to the wood during the season and my sister to extra house duty. Loading the station wagon five to ten loads with swamp oak and scrap wood, occasionally the cops would question the legality of it, our home planted firmly within the greater New York area where the land was either owned by others or swampy flood plain. That is, the places that were not yet mall lots and golf courses. It was hard to explore it as a wild place although in hind sight I could see it was. Humans scattered it like wolves and our trashy little borough had its fair share of failures and dramas from the flooded river banks up the mountain through to the neighbor’s secret glue sniffing habit as his wife battled the family with concealed bi-polar rage. He would eventually lose his job and mind and fall homeless sleeping for a spell in a shed behind my mother’s long since functional pool which fell dead and unmaintained a year or two before my father left embattled, as he was, with steady layoffs and other emasculating gestures of corporate strategies in the nearby cosmopolitan metropolis of Newark, there in the shadows of its glorious neighbor. Not before however my sister and I took a number of beatings for our collective failures as my brother escaped through study and general good behavior to Syracuse University with his early interest in computer technology. I chased girls and fell prey to my emotional sensitivities while maintaining a steady flow of personal drama including early bar fights and a series of near arrests. I did however have enough sense, usually at the final moment, to avoid total collapse with strategic observation of successful avoidance. And when the courts did become involved I stood my ground in clean dress and a prayer that next time I would avoid the foul. But I knew, as surely as I had seen the suburban wars around me unfurl, that I would have to fight my way out. Mostly because I couldn’t let my friends go, who also had to fight their way out, despite my uncles advice to leave them behind as I gained degrees and wisdom and facts confirming suspicions of an altered landscape just below the surface of the plane I learned to navigate in those early years.

Agamemnon Burger

Big B calls from Oregon. This is maybe the tenth time he's called in the past week but each time it's been a bad time or maybe I just didn't want to talk about the weather. It's been on my mind, call Big B, but before I do he calls again. I answer, "Hey B, how are you?" "Hi Daniel. So how's the weather? How's the weather there in Rochester?" I tell him. "How are things with you?" I ask. "How's church?" I remembered about his church deal after he belted the bitch at work, who subsequently took him to court and sent him low and soul searching. "Oh, I'm through my anger management classes now. I still go to church." "Yea, I remember that was going well for you." "Yea." It sounded like he was depressed again. I thought of probing for some answers but instead kept it light, I couldn't get into it anyway. I stood, arms crossed, watching the boy play with legos as I spoke. I could tell he was eavesdropping. There's a standing policy with the boy to use normal adult language but explain the consequences if the boy chose to use such language. There is also a policy of justice so poor behavior doesn't go unchecked. It's changed his Papa as much as it has shaped him.

I catch the date, September 10. 6 years ago, 2001, I was asleep in Wyoming with my betrothed in a little cottage house scheduled to be married in 13 days. Everyone knows what happens the next morning by now. I had fierce beliefs then, they're still fierce but somehow more practical. At least in theory. I still think that youth and the beliefs of the impossible are essential to life.

I felt depressed. "Well, OK B, stay in touch. I'll make it out there sooner than later." We exchange goodbyes. I think of him, out there, probably like he thinks of me, out there. I could tell he wants some beers with the boys. I think of Jennifer and wonder where she is. That was my first real trip to the mountains, Big Sky, Montana. Where I first met Big B. The place where I learned to move forward and cover ground. To see all those views propelled by single human power. Over mountain passes, these are some of the strongest memories I have, Jennifer and making love on the pool table in drunken fits of escapology, climbing Lone peak by moonlight and the pure terror of what life could have been and the traps I felt I escaped. Waking through frost in August or freak storms that drop inches of snow and melt by midday. I left that place in the fog just after watching the OJ verdict delivered (lost ten bucks to that fuckin' killer), drove down to the valley and as I did watched the chip in the windshield slowly crack and spread from the upper driver's side, down and over the entire expanse. The remainder of the trip included a glare from that crack especially in the morning, driving east into the sun with two frightened cats on my lap.

_ _ _ _ sends a text, "I gotta take the dog to the vet. Wanna come?" I text back, "ok". I was out of the apartment early and had her car. "I'm almost done here. Call after." ":)" The dog had fleas. The doc poked her with inoculations, sold flea meds, collected fees and we left to find some food. Rochester, home of such fine cuisine as the garbage plate, a disaster of slop, we found a similar mess, got take out and looked for a park where the dogs could run and we could ponder our mess. No park but we did find a church with a fine wide soccer field next to it. We stop, the dogs jump out and immediately scattered the resident geese to boisterous protest. The dog is kind of an asshole, not that he chooses to be, to be fair. We leave him to it and sit at the little cloister under a headless statue of the virgin. Vandals must have beheaded and smashed her fingers. I appreciate that they left it, broken as it was. I sucked down the slop and ran the field like I meant it. The dogs followed now that the geese were appropriately quarantined to center pond, beyond the reach of convenient harassment. No sign of the missing parts anywhere on the grounds. I felt compelled to at least look, it was catholic. The poverty of our heritage, drenched as it is in wealth and scandal and the most stunning art, the kind that keeps me looking. That bitter fucker, we'll be in bed together someday. Life is too short not to feel the soft earth near, the dark soil of heritage.

Bjorn-Lass

When changes fail there is a kennel in NJ on the banks of the Passaic River not too far from the confluence of 3 major interstate roadways and about a 30 mile distance from New York City where I go to rest. It’s a place where change is measured in life spans. It moves at a steady rhythm and largely to the pace of the creatures it houses. At the kennel, on any given day, there are boarding dogs coming and going, fluctuating with the months and seasons. The summer is busiest as vacationers travel to the shore or further on and leave the family dog to our care. The winter is slow and, much like the wild creatures living within the kennel’s borders, we make preparations for the coming season by stocking and storing the bounty of the summer.

At the kennel, communication is kept direct and simple. Instructions and business transactions are written by hand in pen on scraps paper and the tools in use are primitive; shovel, hoe, pitchfork, metal bowls, palettes, water, everything in a constant state of reuse, all serving a direct purpose. There are at any one time fifteen to thirty pure bred Norwegian Elkhounds, two to ten humans, thirty or so chickens, three goats, two or three horses, four ducks, five or more cats, twelve fish, one apiary, three bullfrogs and a variety of wild critters who come from the surrounding forests and swamps to glean for scraps of spilled food and the occasional chicken stolen by a transient fox or hawk. In this place it is impossible to forget the land and our animal nature upon it. There are no days off, every animal, every day, needs care. The work requires a strong back and a humble heart. The animals eat, get sick, shit, on occasion fight or escape, break bones, get frightened, desire comfort, need all variety of domestic oversight. All of which must be attended to prudently, in a direct manner, with calm. All days at the kennel pass with equal importance from Christmas morning to the heat and humidity of August to the rainy days of March. Most who get to know this place return to it. Those who choose to skirt the periphery remain outsiders, although the invitation to enter is extended indefinitely. The dirt here receives the low and revered in the same manner, from a deceased goat to a house dog to a elderly human, all are laid to rest with due respect, all while work continues to meet the daily needs of those who’ve come. The work is honest because it must be, necessarily so. The kennel is my dirt floor.